Unleashing Data Storage: From Hardware to the Cloud
Data storage evolution: from hardware limits to cloud-driven opportunities. Learn how to stay ahead in the growing datasphere.
Russ Kennedy of Nasuni explores the history of data storage, from overcoming hardware limitations to embracing the cloud. Discover how it revolutionizes businesses today and prepares for tomorrow.
Companies long struggled to stay ahead of data growth, and so did innovators. But the history of data storage shows how issues were overcome and led to new successes, just as its lessons can teach us to do so today.
Critical for handling and leveraging a mountain of information is the data storage industry. Driven by ever-increasing data volumes, the space has developed fast over the past 30 years, particularly in the past 10. This corresponds with the advent of the cloud and the proliferation of related technologies, a shift that has moved data storage from mundane to a true business game changer.
Today, cloud storage enables enterprises to reduce costs and lower risk. It also allows for hybrid office models and the most efficient global workflows. It raises innovation and unearths valuable insights that otherwise would be missed. The big question now is, what’s next? While a lot has changed during my three decades of working with startups and large vendors, one remains clear. If you want to know where the data storage industry is going, it helps to know how and why it evolved.
Unlocking Storage
Network-attached storage (NAS), as we now know it, really began in the 1980s through the efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, and Sun Microsystems. NetApp, created by engineers who left Auspex Systems, would take things further. These companies allowed local networks to connect more storage devices to even more computing systems, regardless of whether they were end-user platforms or apps. Yet, while a wildly popular development, an efficient way to ensure data could be accessed, utilized, and shared was still needed.
The answer to truly unlocking stored data came in 1994 with NetApp’s WAFL (Write Anywhere File Layout). This brought NetApp considerable growth while giving birth to a host of competitors. Amongst them was Isilon, the creator of a new type of architecture that clustered multiple storage appliances that could be controlled as if they were one system. This eliminated hardware, making systems easier to manage and scale.
But Isilon, like NetApp, still needed help to figure out the thorniest issue of all, one that would reoccur throughout history, and that was staying ahead of the rapid growth of enterprise data. Storage solutions had their limits, more hardware was required to handle more data, and the expense and complexity of managing it exceeded the development pace of any problem-solving solutions.
See More: Top 3 Considerations When Choosing a Cloud Storage
Harnessing the Cloud
In 2006, everything changed with the launch of Amazon Simple Queue Service, followed by Simple Storage Service (S3) and EC2, the cloud foundation that would give AWS its 800-pound gorilla status. Using the cloud for storage was minimally an era-defining advancement in technology and business applications. Built on object storage, it was flat, fairly simple, and able to take advantage of new protocols providing users and apps data access over wide area networks (WAN).
An analogy for object storage would be the coat check room at a nice restaurant. You give the desk your coat; they give you a ticket. Then, after your dinner, you give them the ticket, and your coat is retrieved. You know where it is stored the whole time, but not the exact location though you never question that it will be in your hands when you want it.
Cloud object storage works similarly. You send your data off to an object storage system, and the cloud gives you a reference. When you want the data back, your ticket is that cloud reference, ensuring prompt return. The major differences are this coat room never fills up, and you never have to wait in a long line for retrieval. You get your data returned as fast as anyone else gets theirs.
Still, it is important to note that file systems in the early days of NAS required some changes to match the scale and other specific aspects of the cloud. That meant creating a newer method to track and swap those coat room tickets with additional applications. That is where we are now as organizations harness the cloud in record numbers for file storage and much more.
See More: Cloud Storage: Private, Public, Hybrid, and Community
At Your Service
Cloud storage offers three distinct advantages when storing data. With unlimited capacity, enterprises are not concerned about how much data they can send to the cloud. Second, once data is stored by a company, its users can access the information from anywhere at any time, as long as they have a network connection and authorization to access the data. Finally, and arguably most important, this has enabled storage-as-a-service.
In doing so, the need for enterprises to purchase, oversee and manage storage hardware was eliminated. Now, if additional capacity is needed (or less), companies can easily adjust the storage-as-a-service spigot for more (or less) with their provider. This is why understanding evolution matters: The move to a services model set the stage for further crucial developments; it was not just about winning the storage server game.
With storage-as-a-service, not only are files securely managed in the cloud – another physical and financial burden taken off the shoulders of the enterprise – other opportunities have become available. Files are accessible anywhere from any device so that additional offices can be supported quickly and without major hardware costs. With the proper technology, data can spread fast and securely to give company users worldwide optimum collaboration. And with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), unstructured data can finally be culled for new and valuable insights.
In a nutshell, a rather boring area of IT once appeared to hit the ceiling due to hardware limitations – punched through, reached the cloud, and now the sky is the limit. Knowing the history of storage’s transformation, and staying abreast of emerging capabilities, will provide enterprises with an immediate advantage over competitors and a better position to handle data growth and punch through their limitations in the future.
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